Original Letters · D41-14

Graphic arts, visualizers, and the life of documents

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Record summary

  • Reference: D41-14
  • Kind: Original Letters
  • Period: 1966
  • Date/source detail: Archive lists 1966; day/month not specified
  • Reading path: Discernment and transmission
  • Available languages: English + French + Spanish + German
  • D41-14 describes graphic arts, visualizer rooms, temporary printed materials, document reproduction, and the deliberate destruction of short-lived printed documents.

External source links

Translation source links

English translation

  • Status: AI-assisted English translation
  • AI-assisted English translation. AI can make mistakes, especially with technical terms, names, or source-specific vocabulary. Verify important passages against the linked source archives.
  • Source language: French
  • Last updated: 2026-06-24
  • Heading: ACCESSORY REPORT ON GRAPHIC ARTS.
  • It may seem bizarre for Earth specialists in typography, photomechanical reproduction, reprography and printing, that we concede so little importance to printed materials.
  • This vision of things is incorrect: in the first place it is not true that the reproduction techniques on laminar support (WE NEVER EMPLOY CELLULOSE PASTE) are abandoned as we will see next. On the other hand, consider that if at the level of our civilization we had to depend on the printed documentary record as you still do, we men of UMMO would have died "asphyxiated" by an immense heritage of mountains of printed paper.
  • In practice and while we remain in our XAABII (HOME) a room that we phonetically denominate UULODAASAABII, provided with an enormous spheroidal (HEMISPHERICAL) screen serves us as a visualizer to consult the document that we desire to read. With the advantage that numerous drawn graphics can be seen stereoscopically. A UUGEE (CHILD) can thus study a series of polyhedral geometric forms, by actually seeing them in space, instead of contenting himself with simple two-dimensional projections, educating his eidetic-stereo-spatial tendencies.
  • But naturally we are not always inside our dwellings. Nor is it always convenient to carry equipments provided with UEIN GAA EIMII (IMAGE VISUALIZER SCREEN) which replace our UULODASAABII during our travels. It is then that we can really need printed text, a printed three-dimensional photograph, graphics, drawings with diagram, plan or geographical maps, numerical tables, monographic abacuses, etc. etc.
  • Auxiliary equipments denominated GAA OBEE act as transducers converting the coded information, stored in the XANMOO, into a printed image (READABLE CHARACTER: PHOTOGRAPH OR DRAWING AND GRAPHICS).
  • But the life of these printed documents is ephemeral. Even shorter than that of the newspapers you read. As soon as used, and to avoid the accumulation of sterile material that we can comfortably reproduce at will, it is destroyed, dissolved in a mixture of appropriate acids.
  • As you yourselves see the solution to the problem relating to the reproduction of printed documents differs in our world in comparison to that brought by terrestrials.
  • When you must compose the text of a book, the typographer extracts the letters from the case, composing the form on his galley to finally print it at the end, aiding himself with a simple platen press or a Flat machine which previously inks the form by means of an adequate cylinder. The cellulosic paper sheet has picked up the format of the typographic character by transfer of the greasy ink.
  • Or else, to further automate the process, they will resort to a linotype in which a set of matrices and a melting device advantageously replaces manual composition and even automatic monotype equipments.
  • If on the contrary they desire to reproduce a photograph or a drawing, they will resort to the aid of photomechanical processes in "direct" or "line" Photogravure respectively. By photographing the image on a sensitized zinc plate sheet, and by helping themselves with screens in the first case, to obtain by acid etching a cliché or a group of clichés (if they desire for example the colored printing of a tetrachromy).
  • Other times they will use for image reproduction, the obtaining of a metallized cliché, whose fine perforations obtained by an electronic apparatus, will allow printing by means of a Multicopier, or else they will sensitize a selenium plate by means of high electrostatic potentials (PROCESS VERY SIMILAR TO THE ANCIENT METHODS ON UMMO) as you do with Xerographic photocopiers.
  • Or they will have at their disposal diverse methods similar to photolithography, heliogravure, thermoplastic processes or electrostatic printing by projection of inks, photostatic printing by means of a cathode ray tube for typography (which is the latest process invented by terrestrials of which we have knowledge) etc. etc.
  • Precisely this very large range of processes which goes from the ancient fabrications of a plate for chalcographic engraving, etching and lithography, up to the modern photolithography cliché, has been replaced by us with a single universal reproduction process.
  • It is natural that at the current level of terrestrial technique you need to have at your disposal so many printing techniques to satisfy the visualization needs demanded by the men of your planet. It will not be possible for you to satisfy with the same machine for example relief stamping and a brightly colored advertising poster (obtained by silkscreening), delicate screens and offset trichromy, or road signage by means of reflective paints.
  • The basis of our document reproduction process is totally different. Any technician in graphic art will understand it perfectly and in the upcoming continuation of this same accessory report we will describe it summarily. It is clear that the current stage of science and technology of your planet will not allow putting it into practice but could serve as an orientation as we suggested to Doctor Hubert Suter of the Federal Republic of Germany in a report (which was commented on sarcastically by the said Doctor) for the future planning of terrestrial reprographic techniques.

Translation risk notes

  • The term “eidétiquo-stéréo-spatiales” (eidetic-stereo-spatial) relies on “eidetic” retaining its psychological/philosophical meaning.

Terms preserved in source language

  • XAABII
  • UULODAASAABII
  • UUGEE
  • UEIN GAA EIMII
  • GAA OBEE
  • XANMOO
  • UMMO

Suggested UMMOwiki concepts

  • UMMO document reproduction
  • UULODAASAABII (Visualizer room)

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